


Mareridt

by tentacledicks



Series: Nachtwald [4]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Body Horror, Chronic Pain, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Disabled Character, Id Fic, M/M, Self-Harm, Soul Bond, Suicidal Thoughts, dubcon, in a specific context but they're there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: “Why won’t you let me die?” he asked, his voice rough and distant to his own ears.“Because that’s what you want. Not what I want.” Those flat, black eyes held no pity in them, the Beast’s gaze as uncompromising as his rules. The terrible, awful thing in his blood wanted to beg forgiveness, but Aiden was well-used to ignoring the curses his body carried at this point. Whatever the Beast had done to him, he wouldn’t bend, and he wouldn’t break.
Relationships: Jordi Chin/Aiden Pearce
Series: Nachtwald [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1449112
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	Mareridt

**Author's Note:**

> MERRY CHRISTMAS I BRING YOU GORE.
> 
> Mind the tags. The dubcon is closer to noncon early on, so be fully aware of that, and it's going to be a very unfun time for Aiden for a significant chunk of this.

He woke up all at once, the nightmare of the forest falling away. His body took a second longer to catch up, the ringing in his ears fading as he blinked into the darkness of his bedroom, but eventually he was awake and aware, breathing hard like he’d been running for miles. It was a dream. Just a dream.

Aiden pushed a hand against the mattress to sit up, then collapsed again with a hiss of pain when the pressure shot pins and needles through his wrist, leaving his palm tingling and fingers twitching. The sensation faded after a few moments, but the reminder of the curse had him thinking again, looking around the room. His initial relief aside, it wasn’t one of the rooms set aside for hunters in the Order’s halls; too large, for one, and with heavy stone walls instead of the wood he was used to.

The bed, too, was larger than standard, and the blankets draped over him were an odd mix of wool knit and woven silk, a padded cotton quilt on the top layer to keep the chill out. His fingers throbbed, but not as painfully as they had been, the curse going quiet under his skin now that he was no longer putting pressure on his hands. It was quiet in here, and dark, but—

He breathed in, slow and careful. Something spicy lingered in the air, like the boughs sometimes hung over the doorways in the village close to Solstice, and the sharp taste of cold and ice. The wood around him was well oiled and the fabrics had no hint of dust or mildew, only the softly herbal fragrance of proper storage. Underneath it all was the taste of something else, heavy on the back of his tongue, rich with a scent he couldn’t quite name.

His sword was nowhere to be seen, and neither were his traveling leathers. Aiden carefully pressed his palms together, feeling the way the burning ache rapidly spread up through his bones again. He could see his joints beginning to swell, the skin around them threatening to crack and bleed, but when he pulled his hands apart, the ache faded as quickly as it had come. Even the star-iron couldn’t reverse the effects of the curse that rapidly.

Dread sank into his gut like a stone.

The curse was not a dream and neither was his current room. That meant likely that his encounters in the Nachtwald were true memories, both the agonizing mess he’d made of his arms and the Beast’s final words to him. Did that make him a prisoner, a pet, or somewhere in between?

Aiden breathed in again, sharper this time, and felt for the magic sense he relied on to tell when monsters were close. It was utterly useless, serving only to start a headache up behind his eyes as it screamed about creatures and threats all around him, magic closing in on him from every side, threats so close that they might as well be under his own skin. Shaking it off, he sat up using only his core muscles, hands held loose and careful in his lap.

So. The Beast had changed him in some way, and he was being kept as entertainment or for companionship. He couldn’t quite tell which. The strigoi of the southern reaches were supposedly able to turn men into one of their own, but he had no idea if the Beast was numbered among them. Taking different shapes would fit, though they often stuck with owls and small dogs. He’d never heard of one becoming large as a bear.

Perhaps it was only age that made the Beast so strange and powerful, but Aiden wasn’t going to take his chances on that. He swung his legs out from under the blankets, setting his feet on the soft rugs covering cold stone, then gritted his teeth as he pushed himself up off the bed. No clothes had been left behind for him, and no weapons either. Fine. The ripples of agony had already faded from his bones, which meant he could likely fight for longer with his bare hands if he had to.

The keep was massive and built heavy with dark stone even outside of the room he’d been kept in. Aiden padded through cold hallways on silent feet, the moonlight spilling through glazed glass windows and leaving bright spots on the floor. Outside, he could see snow and frost on the ground, black rock and little growth directly around the keep itself; far beyond its walls, the trees of the Nachtwald rose high again, as black as the stone under their roots. What snowfall there had been was light, because Aiden guessed it was only an inch or two deep now.

That would change as winter came in truth, if they were as high up as he thought they were. The mountain range that coiled through the Nachtwald was a vicious thing, home to all manner of monsters and deadly creatures. Like the Beast, who was still strangely absent.

Most of the rooms he passed were empty, swept clean but lonely and cold. If Aiden had to guess, he’d bet he was put up in the most remote part of the Beast’s castle, likely wherever was hardest to escape from. It made the furnishings in his room more suspect, when all these rooms were so bare, because it meant that the room had been furnished for him specifically.

“I’m keeping you,” the Beast had told him. Following the rich scent of something animal and magic, Aiden could only wonder what that meant for him.

A soft, warm glow of candlelight announced his arrival to a section that was actually inhabited. He’d padded down two sets of stairs now, and a third brought him to a grand, open entryway. To his left, he saw the old shape of a chapel, pews and stained glass windows still in place even if the rest of the religious ornamentation had been stripped bare. Past the entrance hall was the abandoned sweep of what had once been a dining hall, he’d suspect, the room dark though light crept out of the servant’s entrance to the old kitchens. His staircase had a mirror across the way, and Aiden walked across the bare floor and began to climb.

Where his half of the keep had been abandoned and stripped bare, this section was well lived in. An old library, multiple doors open to it, the smell of paper and well-loved leather untarnished by mildew and mold, and what were clearly storage rooms to the other side, each smaller with the doors shut but not locked. Aiden supposed he’d been in what was the servant’s wing, or perhaps the guest wing, if the hall leading from his smaller tower to the main building was any indication. This was clearly where the keep’s long-dead family had lived, even if the design was far more modern than the legends of the Beast.

Maybe the Beast had been many people over the years. Or maybe some foolish man followed by other foolish men thought he could lay claim to the Nachtwald, build himself a castle and call it his kingdom. Letting idiot humans go through all the work before taking it for themselves seemed very in keeping with the twisted way the Nachtwald’s inhabitants thought.

The hall ended at the circular staircase to another tower, this one higher than the squat little thing Aiden had woken up in. He stared up the echoing height of it, the stairs disappearing from view around the strong bulwark of the central pillar, then set his foot on the first step. The smell he’d been following was strongest here, the spices of wreaths winding through the richness of a man’s natural musk, something wild and animal caught on the edges of it all. This was the Beast’s tower.

He’d find his answers at the top.

The first door off the staircase led to yet another storage room, though rather than furniture this one was filled with fabrics and heavy chests. The scent of dried flowers and herbs wafted out when he opened the door, and Aiden shut it again after confirming at a glance that it held nothing of interest. Above that floor sat a door that was locked, the first one he’d run into in this rocky prison. He tried it twice, just in case the wood was merely swollen with the cold, then moved on when the numb pain threatened to leave his hands useless. His magic sense screamed louder near that room, which meant it was likely where the Beast kept his ill-gotten gains, those things he’d stolen off of witches and hunters both.

The third door swung open on a bedroom. Like his own, this one was heavy with the scent of spices and wood polish, a massive bed pushed up against a glazed-glass window that swung open to a thin balcony. Hangings coated the walls and rugs laid thick over the floors, with pillows and blankets scattered around the round edges of the room in comfortable piles that looked like they were lounged in—or rolled in, by something other than a man. The Beast’s presence was the thickest it had ever been, in scent and design, the covered glow of lit candles leaving the room sweetly yellow even as the moon shone down cold and blue through the window.

Aiden hesitated, something deep under his skin whispering for him to stay here, then looked up. Slowly, carefully, he stepped forwards, taking each stair with wary footsteps. The Beast was likely aware of him already, because Aiden was certainly aware of _him_ , but he couldn’t shake off years of strict training. His fingers trembled on the door handle, with pain or with fear was hard to tell—then he got himself firmly under control and pushed it open.

The wood desk and chairs caught his attention first, with the accoutrements of alchemy and magic scattered on smaller shelves further in. In an old chair somewhere in the middle of it all, the Beast sprawled in a heavy robe, book cradled in one hand with his chin propped up on the other. The moonlight in this room was much brighter, three of the rounded walls covered in glass that gleamed with silver runes, glittering like ice in the Beast’s black hair. Unlike the bedroom and storeroom below, this room had no fireplace. Somehow, it wasn’t cold.

“I was wondering when you’d get up,” the Beast said, shutting his book carefully and setting it on the desk. A mole sat under his left eye, the only dark spot marring the paleness of his skin. His beard was meticulously trimmed, like he was a noble with too much time on his hands, and his hair was a shaggy mess that fluffed around his head like a wolf’s ruff of fur.

Aiden felt his gut twist, whatever foulness the Beast had poured down his throat leaving him corrupt and unclean. “Why am I here?”

“Well, I was bored, for one. And you’re the first hunter to come into the Nachtwald without a backup plan in a long while. You didn’t tell your Order you were coming this way, were you?” Those coal-black eyes locked onto him, something deep and animal in them that called to Aiden’s blood.

“I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” Aiden told him. It was the truth—both that he hadn’t informed the Order of where he was haring off to and that it wasn’t any of the Beast’s concern. They both knew that he wasn’t going to be rescued either way. Whether that was his own doing or because the Order had written him off didn’t matter.

“Of course you don’t.” The Beast smiled and straightened up, folding his hands in his lap as he leaned forward. “Now that you’re awake, I feel like I should lay down some ground rules. You can go anywhere you like in this castle and the Nachtwald. I won’t stop you from going wherever you please. But grievous injury won’t be enough to kill you anymore, so don’t think about chucking yourself off a mountaintop, and _I_ will kill anything that tries something more effective. If you leave the bounds of the Nachtwald, I’ll bring you back. If you try and enlist your Order into killing you, I’ll make sure they never come near my territory again.”

Aiden stared at him, ice slowly creeping through him until he was chilled to the bone, the temperature of the room be damned. Just enough freedom to hang himself with, just enough to make the bitter reality of captivity that much more painful, and he couldn’t even track down one of the other hunters to rid him of this hellish life because—

“Why won’t you let me die?” he asked, his voice rough and distant to his own ears.

“Because that’s what _you_ want. Not what _I_ want.” Those flat, black eyes held no pity in them, the Beast’s gaze as uncompromising as his rules. The terrible, awful thing in his blood wanted to beg forgiveness, but Aiden was well-used to ignoring the curses his body carried at this point. Whatever the Beast had done to him, he wouldn’t bend, and he wouldn’t break.

“I want my sword,” he said, hands held loose despite the fact that they wanted to clench into fists. It would only hurt him, and he wouldn’t achieve anything by it.

“Suit yourself. The armor’s trash, but you can probably find something that fits in one of the other storerooms.” With that, the Beast turned away, opening and drawer and tossing a ring of keys to him. Aiden fumbled the catch, the metal banging into his knuckles as his nails bit into his own skin, and he winced as it sent a shock of pain up through his arms and set his fingers to swelling. “Those open all the rooms in this tower along with the pantry behind the kitchen. If you want a bath, draw the water for yourself down there. If you want company, you can come up here, but I do have things to do, you know.”

“I have no intention of being around long enough to get in your way,” Aiden told him, looking over his knuckles as his other hand throbbed around the keys in his grip. Not even becoming a monster could fully free him from the hags’ ill-wishing, it seemed.

“That’s what makes this fun,” the Beast said with a wide, feral smile.

Unwilling to entertain that smile any longer, Aiden turned and left. The bedroom called to him but he walked right past it, unlocking the door to the second storeroom as the ache slowly began to chew its way up his fingers.

Here was a veritable treasure trove of Order history, along with the collected armor and weaponry of other human nations. Some of it was old enough that it had to have traveled with the Beast, because the castle’s builders certainly hadn’t brought it. Some of it was new enough that Aiden couldn’t figure out how the Beast had gotten his hands on it without alerting the Order to the fact he was traveling outside the Nachtwald.

He touched the star-iron blade of a naked dagger, then started hefting open the chests and boxes scattered around the room. Over the course of seven chests, he found enough clothing to suit. A few leather vests, though his own armor had been so thoroughly ruined that it was useless. Trousers, shirts, linens for his underthings, a strangely well organized hoard of socks. 

The armor pieces were a little harder to find, at least the ones that fit well, and Aiden gave up on vambraces and gauntlets. His own hadn’t fit well at the end there anyways, and from the way his knuckles were beginning to swell and impede his motion, trying to wear an ill-fitting set would be pain for no purpose.

His sword was on the top of a pile of weapons, sheathed in its scabbard despite the otherwise careless way it was thrown to the side. He strapped it around his waist, then dug up the sheath for the star-iron dagger he’d been keeping close. Most of the rest of the objects in this room were more of interest to a historian than himself, and if he got the urge to read, the library was further from the Beast’s tower than this.

With his pilfered Order castoffs, Aiden retreated back to his room.

* * *

For almost two weeks, he avoided the Beast. It wasn’t a difficult challenge, with their towers on opposite sides of the castle, the main keep heavy and silent between them. Even in the forest around the castle, Aiden found himself alone; none of the monsters he could hear and scent between the trees made an appearance, evidence of their presence only in the way they disturbed the snow on the higher reaches of the mountain.

He couldn’t tell if it was the star-iron sword he carried with him everywhere—it was the only thing that made the pain go away if he was foolish enough to bang his hands into something, the swift healing he’d once woken up with now something of a dream—or if it was whatever foulness the Beast had poured into his flesh. The night was brighter, his hearing was keener, and he could scent the passage of trolls and nisses, the dead chill of wights and the strange burn of wisp magic over the bogs. Just to test if it was the Beast’s presence, he’d traveled a day away, down the mountain and into the black peat bog that curled around one edge of it, nestled between the tall trees of the Nachtwald.

It had taken hours for the first wisps to try and tempt him, but he could smell the thick sulfur of their presence long before then. The Nachtwald was as afraid of him as it had been bold the first time he’d walked underneath its heavy boughs, the creatures that called it home far more wary now.

His magic sense remained stubbornly unhelpful, alerting him only to the shape of a monster wrapped around his bones, but he was starting to get used to that. He couldn’t fog himself out anymore, not with the insistent alarm going off in the back of his head. It didn’t matter how many times he pressed his palms together and tried to find that remoteness that let him function past the pain—every time he achieved something like distance, the magic sense rushed in to fill the gap and make him keenly, awfully aware of the body he was forced to carry.

He’d always known that fog was a crutch, but it was still hellish having that fact rubbed in his face, like a puppy having its nose pushed into the mess it had caused. Aiden didn’t have the option of pretending the pain wasn’t his anymore. Now he had to learn to actually live with it instead.

Occupied by these unhappy thoughts, he didn’t notice the change in the castle until he was almost upon it again. The faint scent of vanilla and myrrh had caught his nose, but he didn’t connect it to anything unusual at first. It was only when he looked up and saw all the glass windows ablaze with light that the strangeness of it registered, along with the strangeness of what he was walking into. He’d only been gone two days.

Though snow still laid thinly on the ground, the stones in front of the entrance were swept clear. The doors were thrown open, hung with green ivy and tiny fairylights, and the entryway to the keep was bright and warm. Gilded paintings covered the once-bare walls, strangely ephemeral when he looked at them too close, and massive banquet tables had been pulled out at some point, runners of white silk coasting down them. More fairylights hovered in the air a few feet over his head, thick vines and golden threads hung from the ceiling of the keep like spiderwebs.

In the center of the shining room, eyeing his work critically, stood the Beast. He was dressed all in white, gold clasps and embroidery giving the only hints of color to his outfit. Moonstones and diamonds encrusted his cuffs and his collar, gleaming at the base of his throat and making the shape of buttons down his doublet. The cloak he wore was lined with fur thick enough and white enough that it could’ve been his own pelt, and it gleamed with diamonds as well.

A small, delicately built crown rested at his brow, made of gold so thin it could’ve been spun silk.

The Beast caught sight of him—though it was hard to keep thinking of him as a beast when he was dressed finer than any of the nobles Aiden had caught a glimpse of in his travels—and frowned. Compared to the glittering finery of the keep, Aiden was a drab, muddy mess; he hadn’t bothered to change out of his usual clothes before heading down to the bog, and its dark mud still clung to his boots and his legs, smeared over the grubby bandages Aiden kept wrapped around his arms.

“You can either stay in your room or stay in the kitchen while you bathe, but you’re not going to be out here tonight,” the Beast said bluntly. His critical gaze narrowed in on the sword at Aiden’s hip, but he said nothing about it. “And if you plan on bathing, don’t plan on _leaving_ the kitchen until well after midnight. If you wanted a bath and a bed, you should’ve come back sooner.”

“I wasn’t aware there was an event happening,” Aiden said, not moving from his spot at the door. Who could the Beast be entertaining?

“You’re aware now. Pick one before I pick one for you.” With that, the Beast turned on his heel and strode past him out the door. Aiden turned long enough to see him flicking his wrist and conjuring wreaths in the trees leading to the castle, then headed for the kitchens. Whatever it was the Beast intended to do tonight, _he_ intended to at least be close enough to see it.

These kitchens were large enough for four or five people to work in them to serve a castle population of maybe a hundred, and likely they’d once done exactly that before the Nachtwald reclaimed this land and the Beast had staked equal claim on this castle. The wooden tub was large enough for Aiden to stretch his legs out comfortably in, but not so large that it was impossible to fill. Since the hearths were dark, he assumed that the Beast had some other plan for feeding his guests, whoever they might be.

Ignoring the way his hands twinged with every item he picked up, Aiden stoked the hearth closest to the tub up, filling a cauldron with water and setting it over the flame. His clothes and armor were peeled off and left haphazardly folded next to the tub, his sword resting, unsheathed, on top of the pile. It didn’t take long for the water to heat up, and he poured it into the tub before refilling the cauldron and setting it over the fire again.

Maybe three, all told, more if he felt the urge to sink into the heat. He still hadn’t found whatever mountain spring the castle got its water from, but wherever it was, it ran clear and cold. He kept an ear out for whatever proceedings the Beast had planned, but thus far, the banquet hall was silent. His arms were still firmly wrapped, and Aiden was loathe to start the process of unwrapping them before his tasks were done. Better to keep the blood on the filthy linens than smeared across the kitchen.

He’d poured the water into the tub twice more and decided on filling it a fourth time when the sweet tones of chiming bells and laughter reached his ears. Abandoning his spot by the tub, Aiden crept to the kitchen entrance, peeking out just far enough to see.

A procession of elves sedately filled the halls, the Beast standing at the arch between them, his teeth as glittering and white as the moonstones on his crown. The elves glittered too, their skin lit from within like they were made of starlight, their hair long and gold as the precious metals of their outfits that gleamed under the fairylights. Past the radiance of those guests were a few other monsters—the tall, hulking forms of three trolls, the squatter shapes of the dwarfs that clustered around them in brightly colored cloaks of their own, a beautiful huldra that swept past the Beast with a smile, her tail flicking about her ankles, and a handsome young nokken with dark eyes and his fiddle in hand.

Aiden knew enough of the elven tongue to identify it, but not enough to understand a damn thing anyone was saying. He couldn’t tell if that was by design or simply because none of them knew a human was around to listen, but he’d bet that the elven delegation were the ones running the show. The decoration seemed to fit their particular sense of aesthetics more than it would the trolls or the dwarves.

He slipped back to the tub, filling it a final time before setting water over the fire to heat for later—if he was going to be trapped here until the party was over, then he damn well was going to stay warm for it—and turning his attention to the wraps around his arms. Slowly, carefully, he unpeeled them from his skin, gritting his teeth as the pull sent shocks of pain through his muscles. After only a few seconds, his fingers went numb, so he had to keep alternating hands as he slowly worked the bloody linen off his arms.

Eventually, he managed to get his arms bare. They weren’t as bad as they could’ve been, though the blood caked to his skin dried black. His knuckles and palms had the worst of it, though the splits in his arms looked more gruesome. It would be hard to tell how bad the damage was until he’d gotten clean.

With a sigh, he stepped into the tub and slowly lowered himself, refusing to use his hands to help. The hot water was a welcome relief after the chill of the Nachtwald, and guiltily Aiden found himself grateful to be clean at all. He was used to going for weeks without anything better than cold streams to bathe in, and he was going to get soft very quickly if he kept doing this. And yet—

When he lowered his arms into the water, the pain was immediate and grinding. It felt like he was being boiled alive, like someone had taken brands to his skin, like his hands had been encased in molten metal, like he’d shoved his arms into the fire and was simply too stupid and too shocked to pull them out again. Hissing softly, he lifted them up, the water running pink past his elbows.

“Yeah, that’s just great,” he muttered to himself before grabbing his sword and setting it across the tub. It eased the burn out from under his skin, so at least the star-iron still worked.

The sounds of the fete filtered past him, language he couldn’t understand and the strange rhythm of inhuman music. Not the nokken, Aiden would wager, because there were too many instruments in it, but he couldn’t tell whether the Beast had conjured _that_ too or one of the elves had volunteered. There was the clink of silverware against plates, laughter, the scent of food slowly permeating the kitchen and making his stomach rumble in complaint, and every so often he could make out the sound of the Beast’s smooth, dry voice rising above the sweet lilt of the creatures he hosted.

His eyes slid shut as he listened, head tipped back against the rim of the tub while his hands rested carefully on the blade of his sword. For once, his magic sense was actually providing some use, alerting to the bulk of the elves in the other room while leaving smaller notes for the monsters that were more native to this world. Elf magic would always register first on it, the Order had told him. It was the nature of the brand. The Order’s magic sense was bastardized from old elf magic, and it meant any paths into the elflands or under fairy hills would blaze like the sun to a hunter.

Of course, the problem was that a horde of elves and the constant alarm of his own body hid everything else his magic sense ought to alert him to. The prickle on the back of his neck was what prompted Aiden to open his eyes to the sight of the huldra and the nokken leaning on each other in the kitchen, watching him with something close to avarice.

“We’d heard the Beast had a new pet,” the huldra crooned, her doe eyes lovely and dark, the tuft of fur at the tip of her tail as gold as her hair.

“And _what_ a pet he is,” the nokken sang, keeping his voice low enough that the fete could still be heard past it.

“I wonder what he tastes like.” The way her eyes tracked down his chest told him that food wasn’t the thing she was hungry for.

“I wonder what he sounds like.” Next to her, the nokken’s eyes followed the same path, his handsome face just mean enough to be intriguing without setting off the warning bells in Aiden’s head.

But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Both of them doing their best to seduce him, because it was in their nature—though Aiden was uncomfortably aware that nokken were meant to target women, and he was _not_ one of those. Regardless of whether or not it was working. Why the rest of the Nachtwald was afraid of him and these two very much _weren’t_ was hard to say.

“I think you should go back to the party,” he said carefully, his own voice rough and uncultured to his ears. Much as he’d like to pretend that was magic afoot too, Aiden was pretty sure that was just his human side showing, all the grace and loveliness burned out of him by the campaign of revenge he’d devoted himself to.

“Mm, we could,” the nokken hummed, dragging his fingers through his dark hair with a hungry promise in his eyes.

“But that wouldn’t be any fun. We’ll be around them for _ages_ ,” the huldra said with a pout, her lips full and kissable.

“Ages,” the nokken agreed, fiddle hanging from his fingertips, “and nothing to entertain ourselves with. It wouldn’t be so bad to have fun now, right?”

Uneasiness prickled down Aiden’s spine, the star-iron sword humming under his palms with the closeness of something it could kill. Neither of them had made any move to hurt him yet, so it hadn’t burst into its battle song, and without a river nearby, Aiden figured they wouldn’t hurt him at all. They only wanted some fun with a stupid human, and here he was, naked and defenseless.

And yet, the feeling of dread wouldn’t go away. “That’s all well and good, but I’m not interested.”

“Are you sure about that?” the nokken asked, head tipped and exposing the thin, pale column of his throat. His shirt hung half-open, chest on display underneath it, and there was just enough muscle there to make wrestling him down on the ground fun. 

Aiden swallowed, then shifted one hand to the hilt of his sword.

“You know,” the Beast said from behind them, voice deceptively mild, “it’s rude to touch things you weren’t given permission to touch.”

Both of them whirled around, the nokken’s grip on his fiddle tightening as the huldra’s tail wrapped around her own leg fearfully. Aiden couldn’t see their faces, but the tight set of their shoulders and sour scent of fear told him enough. Whatever game they’d been playing, attracting the Beast’s attention wasn’t part of it.

“They didn’t touch anything,” he said, sitting up straighter. The Beast’s gaze shifted from them to Aiden, flicking over the sword he was still holding, then back again. It was like Aiden hadn’t bothered to say a word, for all the good it did.

“I suggest you return to the party,” the Beast said. With no more permission than that, the two separated and bolted past him, scrambling to get out of the kitchen before the Beast’s temper could shift again. Which left him alone with Aiden, for better or worse.

Probably worse, Aiden figured, watching the way the Beast’s cool gaze finally shifted back towards him. The crown on his head was slightly askew now, the cloak abandoned somewhere out in the finely decorated halls, and there was a faint flush over his sharp cheekbones, like he’d been drinking. Since Aiden hadn’t seen a drop of liquor in this whole damn castle before now, he’d bet it was elfwine—and he couldn’t help but wonder if it was the only wine that had an effect anymore. Whatever the Beast was, it wasn’t something Aiden had ever seen in an Order compendium.

His breath hitched as the Beast stepped closer, slowly falling into a crouch next to the bathtub. Every instinct burned into him by hunter training screamed for his fingers to tighten on the sword, for the sword to swing, for the Beast’s head to roll. All of those instincts were wrong, of course, because Aiden knew he wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to do anything, and yet—

“You should be aware,” the Beast said, his voice low and hungry as his hand slowly fisted in Aiden’s hair and dragged his head back, “that you are my property, in both name and in truth, and that you are under an oath to protect that property. By nature of what you are, people will want you. I suggest you make a better effort to protect yourself next time.”

“And what am I?” Aiden asked, his heart pounding in his exposed throat. Something deep in his blood was begging for him to submit to that hunger, to stretch out and offer the Beast his body the way he was asking for. Whatever seductive game the nokken and huldra had been playing, it didn’t hold a candle to the sheer force of the Beast’s presence.

“Something very, very precious to me.” The Beast pressed their foreheads together, the hard line of gold around his brow digging into Aiden’s skin. Strangely, he seemed to be telling the truth, and that more than anything sent Aiden’s conflicting instincts into a dizzying whirl of confusion.

“I wasn’t going to let them do anything.” Aiden swallowed, shut his eyes, tried not to think about how badly he longed to climb out of the bath and cling to the Beast’s glittering body.

“See that it remains true, then,” the Beast told him, releasing his hair and standing again. Without letting Aiden say anything else in his defense, he walked off. The chiming laughter of the elves greeted him once he’d passed out of the kitchen, and Aiden was left alone in the cooling water of his bath.

On his sword, his fingers throbbed.

* * *

That fête was the only one the Beast held; Aiden was more wary approaching the castle for a time, but no more elaborate festivities greeted him. On occasion, he still saw trolls and the rest of the mountain folk coming to trade, but they avoided him with the same courtesy that he avoided them with.

Winter came fast on the mountains, especially when the fall brought in storms and fog through the trees. The Nachtwald was warm enough on the lower reaches in the peat bogs and overgrown edges of the forest, bringing only mud as a trial to traverse, but the mountain paths grew thick and heavy with the snows. It made excursions out of the castle more difficult, because even without pressure on his skin, his joints ached and his knuckles split.

Aiden left anyways, packing a bag with stores from the pantry, taking his sword and roaming the Nachtwald for days at a time. Something writhed under his skin, burned in his blood and howled deep in his soul, but he couldn’t reach the monster that wanted to eat his humanity out from the inside. It came closer when the moon was high, vanished almost entirely when the stars gleamed in the absence of moonlight, but never did it tell him what it was. In the absence of answers, he filled his time with walking instead.

The fog beaded up on the cool metal of his grip as he made his way around the mountain. It would be a good three or four hours before he managed to get back to the castle, his long, circuitous route a habit now. He’d gotten very good at finding trails that kept his climbs to a minimum, and he tried to take a different one each time; better to lose a few hours of daylight than to tempt any of the Nachtwald’s residents to set up an ambush. His eyesight was clear enough at night anyways.

There was an edginess building up under his skin though, a need to move and hunt and run that was as foreign to him as the urge to find a dark hole to curl up in. He’d gotten used to his instincts fighting each other, a constant war that sang in harmony to the vicious struggle of the beast in his blood, but it was worse this day. The sun wasn’t more than an hour or two from setting, and he was still too far to retreat into his room, but—no, he couldn’t stay out this night. Lack of supplies aside, the grating anxiety low in his gut refused to let him stay out among the trees, not when his room was a safe den.

Under his hand, the star-iron sword hummed.

Aiden came to a stop, slowly turning a circle as he strained his ears for any hint of danger. His sword and dagger were nondiscriminatory when it came to alerting on the other inhabitants of the Nachtwald, though his hunter brand thankfully marked him as safe. He’d grown used to confirming whether it was a true threat or merely another monster minding itself between the trees, using his common sense now that his magic sense was worthless to him. The Nachtwald’s residents were no longer as wary of him as they had once been. He’d met too many now to assume every alert was a true sign of danger.

There was no sign of the usual inhabitants, though. The wights would be just waking up now, but their eerie chittering song was absent, and none of these trees were home to the solitary nymphs that rarely chose to live on this side of the mountain. He supposed it might be a troll or a mean group of spriggans quietly hiding from his sight, but the scent was all wrong for that—he could only smell the damp decay of the Nachtwald’s rich, black dirt, the greenery of the trees that never lost their foliage even in winter, the cold edge of snow coming, and blood. So much blood.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he focused in on the blood scent, catching with it now the heavier smell of grave dirt, distinct from the Nachtwald’s soil in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It wasn’t close, but it wasn’t far either.

Above him, a raven croaked hoarsely. Aiden stared at it, the beady black eyes and dark flutter of its wings, and slowly curled his fingers around the hilt of his sword. The smell of grave dirt and blood was joined by rot, a foulness that left a film on the back of his tongue. He curled his lip in a silent snarl and the raven croaked again, then flapped its wings and took flight, soaring through the trees and disappearing in the dim light of dusk.

Daylight rarely penetrated the Nachtwald’s trees, and the winter sun was weak anyways. If there were strigoi sniffing around the Beast’s territory, Aiden bet he would like to know of it. Though the castle was visited fairly often by trolls and some of the others who called the Nachtwald home, the Beast had a distaste for the undead that mounted to something close to frenzy when it came to his neighbors to the south. Whatever foulness let him take another shape, it wasn’t from the same source as the bloodsuckers the Order was often called in to handle in the villages of the mountains.

After a long moment, he turned on his heel and started up the slope to the castle again. He couldn’t chase the strigoi, not even with the beast the howled under his skin closer than it had been since he’d woken in the Nachtwald. He could only head back and inform the Beast that something evil was chewing at his borders. If he was lucky, the Beast’s loathing of the undead would extend far enough to drive the strigoi back into their lonely, oppressed little towns.

The monster in his own blood was restless. It had howled with rage when the raven showed itself, but even before then it had been burning up with a need that Aiden couldn’t name. He hoped that as he got closer to the castle it would go still and quiet again—for whatever reason, the Beast made Aiden’s own wild self go docile, uncomfortably content with his presence in a way Aiden couldn’t bring himself to be. The same edginess that drove him out into the wilds of the Nachtwald always dragged him back again.

This time though, the thing under his skin wasn’t going quiet. Whether the strigoi had set him off or it was the time of year, Aiden couldn’t tell. Easy to blame it on the raven, but he’d noticed the wildness in his bones growing worse and worse over the last two days. It was why he was heading back to the castle, after all.

Still. He gritted his teeth as the dew turned to frost, his joints aching as the frost turned to snow. The sword stayed silent under his hand until he got close to the castle, the Beast’s presence setting it to humming with the soft, sweet tone it always sang with around him. Somehow, the Beast had tricked it into thinking that he was safe. Or maybe the sword was better at telling the Beast’s intentions than he was.

Whatever the reason, Aiden was prepared for the Beast’s sprawled shape in the doorway, the heavy drape of his embroidered black robe hiding the rest of his body under its shapeless mass. It wasn’t always that the Beast came to greet him on his return, but it was frequent enough that he’d grown to expect it. What he wasn’t prepared for was the way the Beast straightened, his lazy demeanor shifting abruptly to something more predatory.

Aiden stopped, hand resting on his sword, ignoring the way the cold bit into him.

“Get in the castle,” the Beast commanded, his dark eyes sharp. Sharper than they had been since the night he’d poured foulness down Aiden’s throat, the sharpness reverberating through his voice.

The feral thing under Aiden’s skin didn’t go limp and obedient at the sound. It _howled_ , howled with a rage and desperate hunger that shook Aiden to his core, and he had to swallow back a howl of his own before he could speak. “You’re in the way.”

“Get in the castle _now_. Before something else smells you.” The Beast’s lips curled in a snarl, his teeth a white gleam in his whiter face. He made no move to leave the doorway, and the drapes of his robe had blocked the space Aiden might otherwise slip past.

“I can’t with you standing there,” Aiden said, his ears ringing with the furious rush of corrupted blood, his mouth aching with how badly he wanted to bite that look off the Beast’s face. Whatever was burning under his skin, it wanted to kill almost as badly as it wanted to be tamed.

That it wanted to be tamed at all made him unwilling to get closer to the Beast. He couldn’t trust the feral thing inside of him, not when it refused to play a game he could understand. Not when it was so close to the surface that it felt like it would come bursting out in a second if given the chance.

The Beast snarled audibly this time. Aiden, unable to stop himself, snarled back, his gums aching like his teeth didn’t fit right anymore.

“ _Fine_ ,” the Beast snapped, backing into the keep. Not far enough, not far enough by a long shot, but Aiden slowly crept forwards, his fingers curled around his sword hilt the whole while. He might not draw quick enough, but if the Beast tried to catch him, he would fight.

Or so he told himself. When the Beast stepped forward again, Aiden caught himself running before he was aware he’d made the choice to do so.

The stone floors and shallow stairs disappeared under his feet, faster and faster, hallways pitch black because night had fallen and the Beast never lit the candles in this wing. At some point, he’d let go of his sword, and was only aware of it when he bounced off a wall with a cacophony of pain ringing down his arms. Behind him, the Beast’s bare feet slipped over the stone with barely a whisper, but Aiden could feel him burning across his magic sense like acid.

He slammed into his door and swung around it, using his own momentum to close it again right as the Beast caught up with him. The thud resounded through the room, vibrating down Aiden’s wrists and shredding the skin on his palms. His own breathing was harsh and high, the Beast’s snarling pants matching it almost perfectly, and he felt—

“Stay out,” Aiden said, his voice low and hoarse. The pain was creeping down his bones, into his skin, leaving him twitching at the sandpaper scrape of his leather armor. There were too many layers on him, too much trying to vie for his attention, and the monster under his skin wouldn’t stop howling with something that was simultaneously victory and defeat.

“You’re _mine_ ,” the Beast snarled, his nails sounding more like claws as they scraped down the wood of the door. “Come out. You don’t belong in there. Come _out_ , hunter.”

He dragged in a ragged gasp, pressing his forehead against the door as his bloody palms twitched. It took all of his self-control not to reach for the handle. “No. Go away. Whatever you did to me, I don’t—I don’t want it. Leave me alone.”

The Beast slammed his hands into the door again, rattling it and Aiden with it, then audibly stepped back. There was something wounded in his tone when he said, “You’ll be begging for it soon enough anyways. Come find me when you stop being _stupid_.”

His magic sense burned brighter, then faded into the frantic alarm that was his constant companion now. The Beast was gone, taking with him some of the desperation of Aiden’s own monster, and he was alone. He squeezed his eyes shut, the itching under his skin bleeding into the pain that radiated through his bones, his entire body revolting against him.

With fumbling, bloody hands he managed to strip his clothing off, making an attempt to pile the armor somewhat neatly. He couldn’t stop shaking, the numb pain in his joints making his movements more stiff than usual. For the first time, the star-iron didn’t help; whatever was wrong with him was past its ability to fix, and it couldn’t even reach into the old curse to unwind that now either.

He was whining on every exhale when he was finally naked, his skin jumping even without the extra stimulus. The edgy tension that had been driving him for days had turned into a fire blazing through his nerves, not quite pleasure and not quite pain, and he couldn’t tell which of the two would be worse. With no better options left to him, he leaned into the feral part of himself, tried to listen to the instincts that refused to be ignored any longer.

The bed was too high up. That he knew. It hurt to pull the sheets off, hurt more to unwind his bandages and pile pillows on the floor, but it was important to _be_ on the floor. He hit a wall when he went to move the pile of soft things to someplace better, his conflicting interests dragging him under the bed frame and towards the door. The bed frame made a decent enough den, if Aiden was willing to lay flat underneath it. The door was the only entrance the Beast could come through, so Aiden had to guard it.

In the end, his fear of the Beast won out. He built his den back against the door.

His skin was mottled white and red by the time he was done, the cracks on his knuckles and palms bleeding freely. It would be hellish to clean out of the furs and blankets later, but he would deal with it then. For now, he wrapped himself loosely in the quilted bedcover, trying to ignore the way it rubbed against him. Even if he felt like he was on fire, it wasn’t enough to keep him warm.

A traitorous through drifted through him, dreamy and wistful over the Beast’s muscular body. It would be warmer than this, if Aiden went to him. And it would be warmer still when he—

With a snarl, he shut that thought down, curling in a tightly wound ball in his blankets. The smart thing would be to leave his hands out, let them recover, but he kept them close instead, locked between his chest and his knees. The painful pressure quickly escalated to pure agony, but at least it was an agony he could understand.

He couldn’t manage it forever though. Eventually, he was forced to straighten his brutalized arms out, the joints knotted and swollen, skin so smeared with blood that he couldn’t even tell which parts were broken. The slight pressure of the floor against them was almost too much again, but he let out a soft sob and let himself fall into the pain instead of trying to run from it.

Some part of him, not only a part he could blame on the monster he’d become, wanted the Beast. He’d been running from it for weeks, telling himself that the unnatural attraction was all magic’s influence on his blood. Now, with that want burning through him so viciously that hurting himself was the only way to escape it for a second, he had to accept that fact. The thing under his skin wasn’t howling anymore, too busy licking its wounds and aching for something else entirely, and Aiden found himself wanting to howl instead.

He ached, with longing, with pain, but the ache wasn’t enough to break him. _Nothing_ would ever be enough to break him. A day, a month, a year, he would hole up in this room for as long as it took to feel safe again.

* * *

In the end, it took a week. He and his makeshift den were both covered in blood at the end, and once the flesh healed over his fingers enough to hide the bone again, Aiden dragged some loose clothes on and opened the door. Nothing waited for him outside. He wanted his things to be clean. That meant making his way downstairs with his blankets and quilt in tow.

The Beast watched him with hooded eyes as he piled his blankets next to the heavy wooden tub and stoked a fire for hot water. One of the hearths was occupied by a slowly rotating roast, the Beast’s magic keeping it moving so it would cook evenly, while the other had a vegetable stew of some kind slowly boiling on it. The hearth closest to the tub was almost always unused, which was why Aiden had bothered venturing in here at all.

His star-iron dagger rested next to the tub, available for him to ease the ache in his fingers. Washing anything was a careful dance for him; scrub too hard, and his skin would split and bleed all over his laundry, staining it beyond repair. At least the star-iron was having an effect again, finally cutting through the curse now that Aiden’s blood was no longer boiling in his own veins.

A soft hiss of pain escaped him when he banged his knuckles on the side of the tub, and suddenly the Beast was there, reaching past him to pluck the scrubbing brush from his fingers. The awful, predatory air wasn’t there anymore but Aiden eyed him distrustfully anyways, letting his quilt fall from his fingers.

“You shouldn’t be doing this with a curse like that on your hands,” the Beast said, settling into a crouch next to him. The robe was absent, a loose pair of pants the only thing keeping him decent. Aiden refused to look at the curve of muscles in his bare chest.

“Well, my other option is not having anything to sleep on, so…” Aiden sat on the floor, scooting backwards using his feet alone. With the dagger resting in his lap under his tingling fingers, he felt a little safer. Even if it couldn’t kill the Beast, it was a pointed way to say ‘no’.

The Beast grunted, flicking a hand up. Linen lines unrolled between the kitchen walls, hanging close enough to the fires to catch the warmth but not so close that anything risked catching fire. He held up the quilt and eyed it critically, then flipped it over a line before going to work on another blanket. “You could have avoided this, you know.”

“I told you I didn’t want whatever you’ve done to me. I meant it then, I mean it now.” Bitterness welled up in him, offset by the crooning contentment of his own personal monster, all the more abhorrent because of it. “Just kill me already.”

“No,” the Beast said, without much heat. He glanced at Aiden sidelong, then started to scrub the blanket, ignoring the water that sloshed onto his linen pants. As they soaked through, they went translucent, molding over his muscular thighs until Aiden was forced to drag his gaze back up to the Beast’s face.

“Why not? What’s the point? You let me go anywhere in the forest, then get mad when I hurt myself here, you won’t let me die but you won’t tell me a _damn_ thing about what you’ve done to me…” With a frustrated jerk of his hand, Aiden dragged his fingers through his hair. The strands burned as they brushed over his too-sensitive skin, but at least it was a burn that made sense.

Still hunched over the tub, the Beast heaved a long-suffering sigh. He dragged the rest of the blankets into the water, pouring another cold bucket over them, then pushed himself upright and offered Aiden a hand. “This will be easier in the main hall. More space.”

Aiden eyed the hand suspiciously, but there wasn’t any hidden trap he could see. The dagger was still humming too soft to indicate a near threat, and his magic sense only let him know that there were two monsters in the room. He reached up and grabbed the hand tight, spitefully pleased with how quickly his fingers went numb and swollen in the Beast’s otherwise gentle grip.

If the Beast saw his game, he said nothing of it. Instead, he hefted Aiden up and then led him out of the kitchen, into the great hall that was swept bare and lit with the dim glow of the candles. Once they were in the center of the room, the Beast dropped his hand, walking a slow circle around Aiden as he frowned at the filthy clothes he was wearing. “You should take that all off. It’ll be easier for your first change, though once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to take the clothes with you.”

“I don’t want to get naked in front of you,” Aiden said, warily watching the Beast circle him. Actually turning to keep him in sight would show too much fear, but Aiden wasn’t sure if that was safe.

“Of course you don’t,” the Beast said, a flash of irritation flickering over his face. “If you shift in those clothes, they could end up binding you down. It won’t kill you, but it _will_ trap you. Do you want to be _trapped_ in front of me instead?”

He didn’t. Aiden bared his teeth, then reluctantly began to tug his clothes off, the laces crusted enough with blood that it was more difficult than it should be. The Beast made a move like he wanted to help, but dropped his hand when Aiden snarled silently at him.

Eventually, he was naked, his clothes a heap on the floor in front of him, the star-iron dagger resting on top of them. The Beast walked another slow circle around him, and this time Aiden turned to keep him in sight, fingers twitching with the desire to reach down and grab the dagger. All it would take is one opening, one chance to drive it into the Beast’s chest— 

Faster than the eye could see, the Beast moved. Aiden let out a startled hiss, hands reaching to stop the Beast from doing whatever foul thing he’d been planning, but he was too slow. Always too slow when it came to the Beast, even with that foulness running in his veins. A foulness that _twisted_ , writhed under his skin like the wild thing every time the moon when full, and Aiden gasped when the wildness surged up.

“It will be easier once you know how it’s done,” the Beast said, hands cradling Aiden’s head as his knees failed and he fell to the ground.

His hands couldn’t clench, toes couldn’t curl, his jaw trembling with the force of his teeth growing and forcing their way up through his gums. A high-pitched whine tore out of his throat, back bowing as his tendons snapped and bones warped out of shape, the sockets of his joints turning to molten pain as his limbs rearranged themselves. In the face of the agony he’d grown used to, it was only another drop in the bucket. And yet, Aiden couldn’t stop himself from sobbing anyways, a warped, twisted noise that sounded more animal than human when it pushed free of the cracking bones of his skull.

Through it all, the Beast crooned at him sweetly, thumbs smoothing through the hair that turned into fur as Aiden shifted. His touch was brutal in its gentleness, the counterpoint of it glaring against the torment he’d put Aiden’s body through. And by the end, his fingers were buried in the ruff of fur at Aiden’s neck, his chest a warm wall for Aiden’s nose to press into.

“There.” The Beast’s voice curled with fondness, fingers dragging through Aiden’s fur. “Try and stand, let’s see how quickly you take to this shape.”

For want of anything better to do, Aiden stood. Even now, the habit to use his arms was hard to break, and in _this_ shape, he had no option to avoid it. Immediately, splinters of pain drove up through his wrists—ankles—and the pads of his paws split open and bled sluggishly on the floor. He could feel the difference in the build of his body, the power in his hips and jaws, the tension wound tight around his spine.

This was a body that was meant to rend, to tear, to kill, but the curse sunk its claws into his flesh and stole that from him. He couldn’t launch himself forward when each step would end in a stumble, and when the Beast looked so pleased to see him anyways, Aiden hated the false gift even more. What was the fucking point of being a wolf if he couldn’t even take joy in the run and the hunt?

He growled, trying to intimidate the Beast. It earned him only a laugh, and then the Beast’s hands wrapped around his mouth, forcing his teeth to click shut even as his lips curled up in a snarl. His bloody paws scraped against the pavestones as he tried to back away to no avail, another low growl reverberating through his throat.

“Enough,” the Beast said, locking eyes with him. Aiden froze, tail tucking instinctively, and whined in response. His instincts drove him to fall to the ground and roll, expose his belly and beg for forgiveness, but the Beast’s grip kept him in place. He whined again, pinning his ears and shuddering as the pain rocked up through his forelegs.

For a few seconds longer, the Beast held him, making sure that Aiden was well and truly cringing. Then he let go, his hands parting without warning and letting Aiden fall back on his rump with a sharp yelp.

“Well, we’ll have to figure out your paws before I can take you outside and run with you, but your form is otherwise perfect. You’ve got a good coat for blending in, which means I won’t have to worry about anything wanting to kill you.” The Beast’s fingers were gentle again as he lifted one of Aiden’s front paws, even that bare pressure causing throbbing pain.

His lips curled in a silent snarl that was directed at the pain more than it was towards the Beast, but the Beast clicked his tongue in reproof anyways. Aiden huffed softly and subsided, letting his paws be manipulated as the Beast inspected the damage. He had never let the Beast touch his hands, too wary of the pain that contact would bring and reluctant to be touched at all, and now the Beast was taking full advantage of the chance this shape presented.

“It’s a nasty curse alright. How many hags did you piss off to manage this?” The Beast smoothed over the cracked pads of Aiden’s paws, then reached forward to curl his fingers around the bottom Aiden’s jaw. “Time for you to be human again. Try and manage the shift for yourself.”

Aiden bared his teeth, pinning his ears again, but the Beast’s expression was implacable. He wasn’t sure what the bastard _wanted_ from him—like the rest of this curse, the first shift had been forced upon him unwilling, and he had no way of replicating it from memory. Still, he tried. The Beast wouldn’t let him do anything less.

He had no idea how long it took before his war against his own body finally showed results. It started with his paws, flowing through into his spine and chest, slowly and painfully reversing the changes that the Beast had wrought. Aiden’s whines fell to near silence as he concentrated, and finally he managed to drag in a full breath through his blunt teeth again, his skin slick with sweat from the effort.

“See? I mean, you can’t walk yet, but I’ve got some ideas of how to lessen the effect of that, and you’ll heal faster in wolf shape.” The Beast looked pleased, his hands warm where they cupped Aiden’s now-human face. “Better than being dead, right?”

“ _That wasn’t your choice to make_ ,” he snarled.

The Beast frowned.

“I came into the woods to die, by your hand or someone else’s, and you took that from me.” A shudder rolled through him, his bleeding palms sealed up after the shift. Even still, the ache lingered in his bones. “I don’t want to live like this, do you understand? I’m not even a human anymore, not even a _hunter_ anymore, and now I can’t even choose the way I want to fucking _die_.”

“It’d be a waste to kill you,” the Beast said, still frowning. His black eyes were distant, thoughtful, like Aiden was a puzzle to be solved.

“I don’t care. It wasn’t a waste to _me_. The only reason I had for living was my ability to kill things like _you_ , and that was taken from me. At least if I was dead, I could—” He swallowed hard, refusing to let his throat close, refusing to let his eyes burn.

The Beast’s eyes narrowed. “You—”

“—deserved to have the choice—”

“—aren’t the only one who’s lost everything,” he finished flatly, his thumbs dragging over the thick stubble on Aiden’s cheeks.

“If you’re trying to get me to feel sympathetic to whatever tragedy you think you’ve had,” Aiden started, before the Beast’s grip on his jaw forced him to be quiet. He hissed softly in aborted fury, but he couldn’t open his mouth far enough to voice his objections.

“You don’t know what I am. None of the Order does. You call me the Beast because it’s the shape I choose to take around you, and you use magic you can’t even begin to understand to brand yourselves with. I _couldn’t_ have done what I did to any human, only one cursed to begin with—and it wasn’t the curse on your hands that did it.” After a couple seconds, the Beast’s grip relaxed, letting Aiden speak again.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked, reaching up to grip the Beast’s wrists. They were like iron bars, immovable, and the burning ache of holding them swiftly bloomed through his fingers.

“Once upon a time,” the Beast said in mockery of a fairytale beginning, “there were hundreds of us. We could take whatever shapes we pleased, and we could ride the elf roads however we liked. But when the age of man came around and our old enemies turned _your people_ our direction, we were too slow to adapt. So we died. _All_ of us. If it wasn’t humans and the hunters that came before your Order, it was the witches, the hags, the revenants that fed off the marrow in our bones and became stronger for it. Do you understand? I’m the only fucking one _left_.”

By the end of it, the Beast was breathing hard, a flush of anger high on his cheeks. The wild thing in Aiden’s bones cringed again and wanted to roll, to bare its throat in apology or in supplication, but he kept his gaze steady. His human shape could choose to hold its ground in a way that his wolf shape could not.

“But I’m not the only one left anymore,” the Beast said after forcing himself to calm, his tight grip on Aiden’s jaw loosening.

“Because you made me a thing like you,” Aiden said flatly. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering at the loneliness of the Beast’s life—the Order histories ran back at least six centuries, maybe more if other Order halls had better archivists, and the Beast featured in all of them. No mention had been made of others like him. He’d been considered unique.

“Because I made you like me,” the Beast agreed, shifting his hands up to smooth them through Aiden’s hair, touching their foreheads together and sighing. His lips were so close that Aiden was sharing his breath, and the thought made him uncomfortable despite the fact that he didn’t pull away. Maybe because of that fact.

“...Why?” he asked eventually, his grip on the Beast’s arms much looser now. The damage had been done anyways, a grinding pain that took up residence in his bones and was loathe to leave. No more blood, though.

“There’s nuances to this kind of curse,” the Beast said, his eyes shut now and his eyelashes dark crescents against his pale skin. “I took the brand the Order puts on you and twisted it to suit my needs. You don’t have to be a woman for that. And you were alone. Hunters don’t come alone to my forest, and they don’t leave the rest of their lives behind. It was like you served yourself up to me, my perfect sacrificial lamb.”

“Not for you to do _whatever_ you liked with me.” Aiden forced out a sigh before the anger could take root in his chest again. No matter how dark a pleasure he took in hurting himself to strike back at the Beast, it was ultimately a pointless revenge. The damage would heal. The only one that would suffer was himself.

And maybe he thought he deserved to suffer, but he was so very tired of the pain these days.

“Nevertheless.” The Beast’s eyes were still closed, his thumbs dragging over Aiden’s temples in slow strokes that mimicked how his fingers had moved through Aiden’s fur. Heat still poured off his bare skin, reminding Aiden that he was naked, and that the Beast was close enough for it to make him uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable, but wanting still. The fire in his blood was only banked, not extinguished. Forcing it away, Aiden squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then said, “You owe me.”

“I _what_?” The Beast’s eyes flew open, his head pulling back as his eyebrows shot up. Suspicion entered his gaze as he squinted his eyes, lips thinning at whatever he saw in Aiden’s face. “You want something in return for the gift of life.”

“The curse of undying,” Aiden corrected him, narrowing his own eyes. Whatever tenuous balance they’d had before was gone; he couldn’t go on simply ignoring the Beast in his own castle. Instead, he would force the Beast to give a little, just enough to put his own feet on the ground and dig his heels in. If he was going to be stuck like this, it wasn’t enough to hate his new existence and hunt for some way to be free of it.

He was going to find a path. Like he’d found a path after his village had been slaughtered, like he’d found a path after the curse had stolen his ability to hunt. The first steps of the path started here, in forcing the Beast to acknowledge his right to compensation for magic worked. If he wasn’t human anymore, it meant he was bound by inhuman rules—and there were plenty of those.

“...Fine,” the Beast said reluctantly, pulling his hands away from Aiden’s head. The loss of warmth was sharper than Aiden expected it to be. “What would you ask of me?”

“Your name.” Aiden bared his teeth in a feral grin at the look of shock and offense on the Beast’s face, rocking back on his heels and letting his aching hands rest between his thighs. “I want something to call you. Something better than ‘the Beast’. If we’re going to be living together for the foreseeable future, then I want your name.”

“You understand that names have power?” The Beast snorted, all good humor gone from his expression. “Of course you do. That’s why you’re asking for it.”

“That’s why I’m asking for it. And you owe me a boon, Beast. If I’m so _fucking_ precious to you, then you owe me far more than that.” Aiden leaned in, until he was close enough to kiss the Beast. For once, the Beast was the one who seemed unhappy with the invasion of personal space.

A muscle jumped in the Beast’s jaw. He glanced away, the tendons in his neck tight, then dragged a palm over his face and sighed. “Very well. You cannot give it to anyone else, and should you refer to me by it in front of others, they will not understand it. My name is buried for a good reason. You accept this?”

“That’s fine. I know why you’d hide it.” If the Beast was so old and so rare that none who knew his kind remained, then his name would be a _very_ dangerous thing to have. A sharp, shameful thrill struck up Aiden’s spine at the thought. He was going to take control of his life again, one way or another.

With an annoyed grunt, the Beast met his eyes again. “My name is Jordi, last of the clan Schyn, once known as Georgos, the one and only Sortiarius of the White Tower. I am the Eater of Death, the King of the Nachtwald, the Beast, and the only remaining trueblooded shifter. Know this, and have sway over me with it.”

The words burned their way into his mind with magical intent, the power so thick that he could taste it, sharp and electric, on his tongue. Aiden knew, with a certainty that went deeper than bone and blood, that he would never forget the names, any of them. He also knew that the Beast was far older than he’d first suspected, even knowing that he’d been in the Order’s chronicles from the beginning.

“Jordi,” he said slowly, feeling the name in the divot of his tongue, the sizzle of it across his taste buds. “What does it mean?”

“It means Jordi.” The Beast’s voice was dry, some of the frustration gone now that his hand had been forced. “You have yet to give me _your_ name, I notice. Do I have to keep calling you ‘hunter’ in my head?”

Tempting to say no, but he had laundry to do, and giving the Beast some small concession might make it easier to do it. After all, it wasn’t like he wasn’t already under Jordi’s sway, strange as it felt to think of him by name.

“It’s Aiden,” he said, standing up using only the muscle in his legs, hands limp in front of him. The pain was starting to fade finally, and now was the best time to take advantage of the fact. “Just Aiden, these days. It means fire.”

Jordi did not stop him from leaving.

* * *

He didn’t stop Aiden then, and not any of the times Aiden flitted out of the castle again in the weeks that followed. Winter wrapped around the dark forest with heavy silence, the snow dusting the lower reaches while ice made a valiant attempt at solidifying the bogs. The upper reaches of the mountains were so heavy with snow that it piled up against the windows of the castle some mornings, but Jordi’s magic kept the courtyard clear, and Aiden never had to fight his way through it to get back home.

Home. The word settled uneasily in his stomach, like so many of the things he’d grown used to in the Nachtwald. Regardless of whether or not he wanted it like this, Aiden had to accept the fact that the castle _was_ home now. Dreary as it was, his rooms were his own and rich with his scent, and Jordi had gotten into the habit of leaving hot meals waiting for him. They hadn’t spoken since that first shift, not even when the moon waxed full and Aiden found himself caught in his other shape again, but there was an air of waiting around the rooms regardless.

He supposed that was Jordi’s way of extending a peace offering. No contact until Aiden initiated it, and no more forcing himself into Aiden’s space. As peace offerings went, it was the bare fucking minimum, but Aiden accepted it for the attempt it was.

The silence did begin to grate eventually. The Nachtwald was always quiet, quiet as a grave, but winter made it quieter still. Without Jordi’s greetings and mocking attempts at catching Aiden’s attention, it was like he’d gone deaf and dumb, no one to talk to or hear. If it weren’t for the wights that chittered through the treetops at night, Aiden might think himself dead.

He stood on the edges of the bog and stared into the setting sun now, the wights whistling and cackling as they swung through the trees. Solstice would be here soon, and the darkest night of the year. The Order had held celebrations throughout the days before and after it too, the village that served their hall working for weeks to have everything ready. Songs, lights, and alcohol, those were the things that drove away the dark. Not that anything truly dark ever ventured so close to the Order’s domain.

Out here in the Nachtwald, Aiden could feel the world turning under his feet, the shift of the seasons approaching. Clouds heavy with snow threatened on the horizon, but he had a feeling that the winter solstice would be clear. No way to be sure of course, but the certainty ran bone deep.

The forest went silent.

His gaze snapped to the trees immediately, hand dropping to his star-iron blade. With snow on the ground, it was foolish to go without gloves, and yet he had to if he wanted to take any benefit from the blessed metal. It was achingly cold under his touch though, and he’d be lucky if his hand didn’t fuse to it if he had to draw it.

Nothing at first, not even to his curse-sharpened eyes, but his sword sang warning under his fingertips, and the wights never went silent unless something was very wrong. Aiden breathed in, tasting the snow and the scent of the bog, the heavy pine scent of the trees at his back, the sharp chill of the air and—there.

Blood and grave dirt again, but distinct this time. More than one. He slowly turned in a circle and looked up, scanning the dark treetops for the owners of the scent, lips parted so he wouldn’t lose it. Not quite, not quite, and then suddenly he saw them all at once.

“One for sorrow,” he whispered, his hoarse voice low as he counted the ravens in the trees. More than one, that was for certain. Unless there were more in the trees across the bog, he might be lucky to deal with a small flock.

Then again, seven strigoi was an unlucky number, raven shape or no. He made sure he had them counted and their scents memorized, then breathed out slowly.

The largest raven croaked, tipping its head to examine him. The other ravens followed suit, their beady eyes dead and cruel where they pinned him to the ground like a bug. Once the sun set, they would be stronger, and he couldn’t face seven of them alone. Not with his hands like this. Not even with the Beast’s curse in his blood.

Aiden bared his teeth, then ran.

He could hear them take flight a second later, swooping through the trees, but that was a secondary concern. In the months since Jordi had taken him, Aiden had learned this side of the mountain like the back of his hand—better, because the Nachtwald wouldn’t crack and bleed from a little pressure. His wolf shape would be useless with his front legs still a handicap, but he could draw on its power to lend speed to his weak human legs in their stead, bounding over fallen logs and up the well hidden mountain paths as he climbed.

The trees remained silent, even the wights wise enough to avoid drawing the attention of the foulest of undead. Since Aiden couldn’t be so lucky, he simply tried to outrun them. Even on wings, the Nachtwald was perilous, and Jordi hated the strigoi with a fervor that poisoned the land itself against them. Their wingbeats faded as the low croaks of dismay were caught in the whipping of tree branches and vines, then disappeared entirely as Aiden started in on the heavier snows.

Like always, the courtyard was cleared for him. He hit the flagstones too fast to stop, skidding over the frost-slick surface and slamming into the doors with a jarring shock up through his arms. Without waiting for the ringing pain to fade, he yanked a door open and slipped inside, slamming it shut and locking it.

Windows. They could get in through the windows. And whatever spells Jordi used to keep vermin out would be useless in the face of the foul magic the strigoi took part in.

For the first time, Aiden raised his voice and called, “Jordi? We have a problem.”

He didn’t know what he expected. The Beast to come swanning out of his wing with careless abandon, perhaps, or the sound his dry voice echoing from the kitchen. What he _didn’t_ expect was for Jordi to be there in between one moment and the next, his pale hand slamming into the door next to Aiden’s bandaged one, the heat of his body burning into Aiden’s frozen muscles as Jordi curved over him.

“What problem?” Jordi asked, before breathing in and going rigid. “Why do you smell like the grave?”

“An undead problem, that’s why. There was a strigoi in the Nachtwald, the night that I had to lock myself up. I didn’t get the chance to tell you before you chased me, and then it slipped my mind.” Aiden swallowed, the memory of fear and rage filling his throat with bile.

“That was my fault. I should have had better control. Only one?” For all that he said the words easily, Jordi did sound faintly regretful. Too much of him was focused outside for Aiden to hear anything more.

“Only one then. There’s seven now.” And he could feel them approaching the castle, his sword humming at his hip and the hunter brand on his neck burning. For once, his magic sense was cooperating, caught by the intensity of the strigoi covey on the other side of the door. It was a cold comfort.

Behind him, a low growl vibrated through Jordi’s chest. The wild thing in Aiden’s blood wanted to growl with him, bare its fangs at the monsters trying to fight their way into its home, and he let it loose enough to growl softly as well. Neither of them went to open the doors, despite the fact that he could hear booted feet on the flagstones outside, the sussurant whispers of the strigoi’s black tongue.

“Do you have the dagger with you?” Jordi asked, his voice so soft Aiden could barely hear it, his breath hot against the curve of Aiden’s ear.

He did. Even if his first instinct was always to reach for his sword, the dagger was strapped to his waist every time he went out. Sometimes, it was simpler to use a small blade, even if there was nothing in the Nachtwald brave enough to attack him. “Why?”

“A stake of rowan-wood through the heart counteracts the magic that drives them,” Jordi murmured, “and this is true even for those strigoi that haven’t fallen to undeath yet. Your dagger will do much the same. The Order taught you where to go from there.”

“I don’t have anything to make fire with,” Aiden said, his heart pounding. The Order never sent any less than three hunters to deal with a strigoi ruling a village, even the living ones. Taking on seven of the undead alone was suicide. But hadn’t he wanted that in the first place? Wasn’t that why he’d come out to the black forest so many months ago? Why did the idea fill him with a furious dread now?

“I can make the fire. Focus on getting the heads off. They won’t be able to rise again so quickly that the few minutes it takes me will matter.” Jordi’s hand shifted sideways, his thumb just barely brushing against the curve of Aiden’s little finger. “You were right. I’m sorry.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate the apology, but what are you talking about?” He strained to hear the strigoi moving outside, the sound of their feet on the stone drowned out by the pounding in his ears.

“It wasn’t my place to choose your life for you. I could have left you to the rest of the Nachtwald and been done with you. Strigoi are some of the few that can injure you unto death; what you do with that information is up to you.” Jordi breathed in slow, then pushed up away from the door. Away from Aiden. There was a predatory gleam in his eyes, and he seemed uncaring of the fact that he was naked. “Open the doors.”

Moving slow would only give the strigoi an opening. Aiden decided not to give it to them, throwing the door open with as much strength as he could manage, remembering at the last second that Jordi’s changes had made him so much more than human. The wooden weight of it cracked against the stone wall of the keep, drawing seven sets of eyes to him as he stood in the entryway.

A flash of white burst past him and then there was no time to count his enemies because he was too busy being swarmed by them.

In his massive wolf shape, Jordi spun and snapped between the group of undead, catching one of the strigoi in his powerful jaws and shaking it like a toy. Aiden couldn’t watch for long, two of the strigoi breaking off from the group and coming at him from different directions, clearly intent on getting him off the battlefield. He curled his lips in a defiant snarl, the hum of his star-iron sword coming in harmony with the growl in his chest, ducking the strike of the first undead and slicing the hands off the second.

The creature shrieked in rage, the grating sound slamming into Aiden’s ears with unnatural force, then launched itself forward with fangs alone. He drove the blade through its throat, taking it down to the ground and slicing through the gap between the vertebrae, bringing the sword back around to make sure the head was fully separated from the body. No risks. There were too many of them to get cocky.

But he’d let himself be too caught up in one opponent, a rookie mistake that he couldn’t afford either. The second strigoi struck him, its body like a hammer as it slammed him into the flagstones. Aiden managed to tear a bloody hand off the hilt of his sword, shoving it up into the undead’s mouth as it tried to bring its maw of fangs down on his vulnerable throat. It screamed, frustrated by the block in its way, clawed fingers hunting for the clasps on his armor so it could tear into the vital core of him, too uninterested in his limbs and extremities to take advantage of that instead.

These were the younger ones, the ones who hadn’t yet learned to control themselves after their second awakening. All strigoi learned their blackest magic while living, but only found true power after death—that power came with a loss of self in the earlier years, as instincts overrode sense and they turned into ravenous monsters.

Aiden used that, jamming his hand further into the strigoi’s mouth as he dropped the sword and fumbled for his dagger. The fangs buried in his skin hurt no worse than a door handle on a bad day. The hags’ curse was useful for _one_ thing, at least.

It managed to hook a claw into the buckle of his chest piece, but he’d gotten his dagger free. While it cackled in triumph, he drove the star-iron blade through its side, slicing between the ribs and through the lung until the very tip of it pierced the unbeating heart at its core. The strigoi froze, then collapsed on top of him in a heap of skirts, immobile when he shoved it off himself and scrambled to his feet again.

The first that Jordi had struck was in pieces around the courtyard, its head and limbs separated from the elegantly clothed torso laying only a few feet away from Aiden. A second had fallen while Aiden struggled with his own pair, the trailing lace of its dress soaked with blood while its head lay sightless near one pale, pretty hand. That was four down, and only three to go.

Aiden took it all in at a glance, turning his attention quickly back to Jordi, his fingers tightening around his sword as he picked it back up. The brief surge of triumph was quickly overwhelmed by dread; between them, they had dealt with four of the undead, but it had come at a grave cost.

One of the strigoi had managed a lucky swipe across Jordi’s side, slicing skin off of muscle with all the ease of a blade. His fur was already coated in blood, the three remaining strigoi harrying him in turns, one hanging off the massive wedge of Jordi’s head as it frantically tore into his face having already left a bloody crater behind where an eye should be. As the panic set in, Aiden saw one of the undead duck around to Jordi’s exposed side, slicing his belly open as steaming guts spilled out of the tear left behind.

He moved without thinking, tearing the strigoi off Jordi’s face and beheading it before he was even aware of swinging his blade. It caught the attention of the other two, their lovely faces contorted with fury as they moved in unison to strike—Aiden readied his sword, setting himself at Jordi’s blind side and trying not to let the fear rule him. The Beast had seemed so immortal only moments ago. Jordi couldn’t _die_.

Two against one was bad odds, but the single-minded focus meant the strigoi had forgotten that Jordi was still capable of moving. As one struck low and the other struck high, Aiden ducked backwards, feeling the bulk of Jordi’s body blur past him as the wolf slammed its jaws shut around the head of one attacker. The strigoi’s body jerked frantically, then stilled as its spinal column was severed, but the last still strigoi screeched in furious denial as it twisted like a snake to try and rip Jordi’s mouth open.

Aiden drove his sword through its chest, feeling the sternum crack and give way, bone and muscle failing underneath the blessed star-iron that would seal the undead in stillness until fire could cleanse it completely. It fell back with a meaty thud, the other strigoi’s head rolling a few feet away as Jordi’s jaws parted and he let it fall. In the silence that followed, Aiden found all of his attention caught on the rattling wheeze of Jordi’s lungs. His boots slipped over the black viscera slick across the ground, Jordi’s blood almost as dark as the undead that lay in pieces around them both. The brilliantly white fur was dingy and dark too, smeared in red too many places for Aiden to count.

Fire. He needed fire.

Tearing himself away from the sound of Jordi’s pained breathing, he ran inside and grabbed one of the candles. It had barely any heat to it in his hands, but it would do—the undead caught like the driest of tinder. Aiden dipped it against the corpses closest to the door, and when those caught almost instantly, he started lighting every body part in the courtyard until all were engulfed in flame. The light flickered with grimly festive glee, gold and white, and under the dancing flames, Jordi looked— 

Aiden’s breath caught, the candle dropping from his numb fingers and bouncing harmlessly on the stone. The light caught on the few clumps of fur still white, lending more horror to the matted brown where viscera had soaked into Jordi’s skin. One of his sides gleamed sickeningly, oozing blood and exposed muscle offset by the yellow of fat, his skin hanging in a heavy drape where it dragged against the ground. Jordi’s head hung as he wheezed, and his body trembled violently before the low crunch of changing joints and shifting bones reached Aiden’s ears.

He couldn’t let Jordi shift out here, where they were both exposed. Heedless of the cold ache in his hands, Aiden seized Jordi around the middle and started hauling him towards the door. The soft whines continued, echoing off the flagstones as Aiden’s boots slipped and slid over the blood coating them black, but he managed to heave the twitching mass of flesh and bone over the threshold before letting go. The door was harder to shut this time, especially when he had to drag Jordi out of the way, but he managed it, his cracked and bleeding fingers fumbling over the bolt as he jammed it in place. A door was a powerful thing. With no other spellcasters coming through, he’d have time to get Jordi somewhere safer.

A low gurgle of agony came from behind him. Jordi had managed the shift to human, but it didn’t make him look any better—his right eye was a black hole in his face, blood smeared down the shredded curve of his cheek, and the flap of skin hanging from his side was all the more vivid when so much of Jordi’s chest was now exposed muscle. The slice across his belly had only barely shut, the mass of Jordi’s intestines pushing against the weak line of healed skin, and the leg hadn’t set at all, Jordi’s body too damaged in too many places to properly heal.

“No,” Aiden breathed, caught by the sudden and terrible knowledge that Jordi was _dying_ , that Jordi would _leave him like this_ , alone and immortal, trapped by the curse and alone, so fucking alone he couldn’t _stand_ it. “No, no, don’t you fucking give up on me, you son of a bitch, this was _my_ death to take, _not_ yours.”

The groan that rattled through Jordi’s chest might have been a laugh, but it was so twisted by pain that it had become unrecognizable. Driven by the fresh burst of energy fear had gifted him, Aiden grabbed Jordi’s arm and hooked it over his shoulders, hauling the Beast up and heading for the staircase to his mage tower. If there was a way to fix it, it would be there. His training and his magic sense were no help, the beast under his own skin little better when it was so consumed by terror, so Aiden only had himself to rely on. 

He gritted his teeth and ignored the swollen stiffness that froze his fingers, the bite of the curse that left him bleeding into Jordi’s wounds. Once they were in the work room, once he had Jordi fixed, _then_ he would scream. Then he would let himself feel the pain. For now, he had a task, and he would finish the task to the best of his ability. He would _not_ fail.

He would _not_ be alone again.

“You don’t get to die on me,” he hissed, taking each step with murderous determination. The work room wasn’t far now. Just one more flight. “You don’t _get_ to leave. You kept me here for a season? Get ready for me to keep you here forever. You don’t fucking get to leave me, you stupid bastard, don’t you _fucking_ dare try.”

His first kick only rattled the door to the work room, but the second sent it flying inward. Aiden snarled as he dragged Jordi the last few feet in, dumping him in a heap on the rug in the center of the room. It looked expensive. Spitefully, Aiden hoped it was one of a kind, that Jordi would ache at the loss of it because he’d been _stupid enough_ to get himself so gravely injured. How fucking dare he. How _fucking_ dare he?

“Don’t think for even a second I’m going to let you die. You don’t get to die until _I_ die, Jordi, and I’m not fucking dying tonight.” Aiden dragged his hands through his hair, ignoring the way the gore slicked it back and the strands of hair sliced like knives across his skin. The books were written in too many languages, almost none of them the ones Aiden had rudimentary knowledge of, and he had no idea what any of Jordi’s tools could do. The alchemy set was a place to start, but he had no experience and even less time to learn. He had to think. There _had_ to be a way to save Jordi.

With another rattling groan-laugh, the Beast slowly sat up. His hands trembled as he stared down at them, and then Jordi shut his eyes and shuddered, unnatural light spilling through the runed windows and outlining his body in gleaming silver. The bones under his skin moved, but it wasn’t with the agonizing slowness of earlier. This time, Jordi almost _melted_ under that light, slipping from one shape to another with an ease that he’d never shown before.

The swan was still missing an eye and stood on a crooked leg, but his side was only smeared with red rather than hanging itself to pieces—from there, the stag lifted up on trembling, but whole, legs, his massive rack of antlers scraping the floor as his bloody head hung, the black pit with his missing eye still dark as pitch—a second later, a python coiled, his belly fully healed and the eye returned, clouded over and blind as he coiled, twisted, turned—into the wolf, fur white and gleaming again, soaking up the false moonlight as the blood burned off his coat, stretching his legs out hale and hearty—

Jordi leaned back, pulling his hair out of his face and running a hand over his repaired jaw. His eyes were black and gleaming again, both of them quick and sighted, while his muscles flexed under the pale, unbroken skin across his body. Like the night had never happened.

Aiden, in his filthy armor, his bandaged arms so covered in viscera that they still dripped with it, more dyed with red and brown and black than his own natural coloration, just stared.

“You would have missed me,” Jordi said, sounding surprised and a little wistful. His dark eyes locked onto Aiden’s, something dangerously like hope flickering inside them.

“I—” Aiden faltered, his arms trembling as the pain hit him all at once. He’d been so afraid, so _fucking_ afraid, and his head was all a mess now, the curse in his blood howling along with something else that _sang_ between them, the joy of knowing Jordi was still alive offset by the horrible anger that he’d nearly died in the first place.

It would have been such a _stupid_ death. He couldn’t stand the idea of the mythical Beast falling to something so mundane as a covey of strigoi.

“And what is _this_?” Jordi murmured, dragging a hand down his chest and frowning down at his palm where it rested over his heart. The touch echoed through Aiden’s body, a low thrum of belonging that hummed through his bones. Foreign. Unasked for. But not unwelcome.

“I don’t know,” he croaked, his hands dropping to his sides, swollen and aching. He was missing most of his nails. Whether they’d fallen off earlier or in the trek upstairs was a mystery he didn’t care to solve. “You were _dying_ , Jordi.”

That shivered through them both too, Jordi’s true name curling through Aiden’s soul like a vine, gripping him tight enough to strangle but tender enough to last. He gasped, Jordi’s sharp intake of breath a second ahead of him, then squeezed his eyes shut. The curse in his blood had always wanted the Beast, of course it had, it was _made_ for that, but this was something entirely different. This was _him_ , so deeply and utterly him that he couldn’t refute it, and Aiden wasn’t sure if he even wanted to try.

“You _bound_ me,” Jordi said, delight slowly blooming in his voice. “By blood and name, you bound me to you. Aren’t you just a terribly clever one? How did you manage that?”

Aiden didn’t know. He didn’t know and he didn’t want to know, because he’d shoved his bloody hands into the warm crevasse of Jordi’s side, felt the heavy flap of skin lay over his ruined arm like a leather cape, hissed the words out with gore between his teeth and he’d _meant_ it. In no world was Jordi allowed to die a moment, a fucking _second_ before Aiden decided to.

And he didn’t want to anymore.

“Never again,” was what he said instead, dropping to his knees and crawling into the space left between Jordi’s legs. If the magic had burned the filth off of Jordi then it hadn’t done _shit_ to Aiden, and he intended to taint that pristine white skin again. He wasn’t fucking done with the Beast yet. “Don’t you _ever_ do something like that again, do you understand me?”

“How bold of you to give me orders.” Jordi’s hands lifted, cupping Aiden’s face without regard for the drying blood smeared there. There was a hint of warning in his voice, a gentle reminder that he could put Aiden on his back with belly exposed in a second if he wanted, but no more than that. For now, he was allowing the insolence.

Which was good, because he was going to get fucking used to it. He was _stuck_ with Aiden now, he wasn’t going to be able to shake him off if he tried, and Aiden had no intention of playing the meek little mate. The Beast wanted a companion? Fine. He would get a companion, would get an _equal_ , and he was going to learn to fucking like it.

In a second, Aiden closed the distance between them, sealing their lips together as he braced his hands on Jordi’s pale hips. The pressure shocked through his palms, made his bones grind together as the sluggishly healing skin split open again, but he didn’t care. Around him, Jordi’s magic worked, the new bond between trying to heal the damage like the star-iron that he’d left behind in the courtyard. He fell into that, fell into Jordi’s mouth on his own, fell into the terrible, wonderful knowledge that he was _wanted_ , and he finally gave in to the desperation that the curse filled his blood with.

Aiden had always been a monster.


End file.
